Europe physical map
Europe is the second smallest continent in the world, just behind Oceania. It is united to Asia, forming a huge peninsula within what is called Eurasia, and owes its characteristics of individuality, as much to its physical elements, as to its historical and human features.
It limits with the sea for three of the four cardinal points. Broadly speaking, with the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and its wide façade formed by almost 38,000 km of coastline, which shows a very important oceanic influence. Oceanic influence that comes to characterize it as one of its most important physical features, determining the climate in most of the continent. To the east its boundary is continental and, according to most geographers, it is situated at the eastern foot of the Ural mountains, the Ural River, the Caucasus mountain range and the Black Sea up to the Sea of Marmara.
Europe is the continent with the flatest territory, with an average height of 230 meters. The maximum expression of these plains is the great European plain, which extends 2,000 km from the French Atlantic coasts to the Ural mountains, the physical border with Asia. The highest points are Mount Elbrus (Russia) in Eastern Europe (5633 m), Shkhara (Georgia) (5204 m) and Mont Blanc (Italy-France) in Western Europe (4807 m).
Among the gulfs of Europe, the Bay of Biscay (France-Spain) and the Gulf of Bothnia (Sweden-Finland) stand out. The most important European straits are the Pas de Calais (France-Great Britain), the Gibraltar (Spain-Morocco), the Dardanelles (Turkey), the Bosphorus (Turkey), the Messina (Italy), the Oresund (Denmark-Sweden), etc.
Its main peninsulas are the Scandinavian, Iberian, Italic and Balkan, in addition to the peninsulas of Kola (Russia), Jutland (Denmark), Brittany (France) and Crimea (Russia).